The Omega Project (33 page)
“Eisenbraun, good, you can earn your supper by dragging this monster back to the farm.”
Pushing her aside, I stood over the carcass of the dead creature—a young adult male—its tentacles bound, an arrow piercing its skull. The women had sliced off its eye shafts, torturing the poor beast before it had perished.
“Where’s Andria?” I growled, my body trembling.
“Follow the blood, you’ll find her. Better toughen up,
Eisenbrains,
this place eats schoolgirls like you for breakfast.”
Ignoring the impulse to beat the masochism out of the sadist, I hurried up the ridge, the blood trail leading me through a small grove of trees—Oscar’s desperate pan flute exhalation sending me into an all-out sprint.
My former cephaloped companion was hanging upside-down from a lower tree limb, the squid’s tentacles bound in a wire noose. Andria stood at eye level, torturing the poor creature, tracing an
X
in its dangling bulbous head with the sharp tip of her arrow. The third member of Oscar’s trio—another young male—was splayed by her feet, dead.
“Andria, stop!”
She turned to face me, her eyes wide and dancing as she licked the blue blood from the arrowhead. “Try some, Ike. It’s better than sex.”
Snatching the arrow from her hand, I snapped it in half over my knee. “Cut him down.”
“You’re crazy.”
My eyes traced the wire holding Oscar from the limb of the oak down around the base of the tree trunk. Locating a stick, I shoved the narrower end inside the loop, attempting to snap the wire free.
“Ike, what are you doing? Baby, these things want us dead.”
“Dream or no dream, I am not going to allow you to torture him.”
I never heard Monique, only the air whistling in my ear and the sickening
craaaack
as the back of my skull absorbed the impact from the oak baton.
27
After almost 15 years of work and $40 million, a team of scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute says they have succeeded in creating the first living organism with a completely synthetic genome. This advance could be proof that genomes designed in a computer and assembled in a lab can function in a donor cell, eventually reproducing fully functional living creatures, that is, artificial life.
—
Christian Science Monitor,
May 21, 2010
When I came to, it was night and I was lying on my back. An invisible elephant sat on my chest, pinning my body to a hard, flat reverberating surface. I felt like a goldfish out of water, each breath a harsh gasp, each exhalation threatening to crush my rib cage.
We were moving. I could tell we were moving from the passing cloud formations and the wind whipping against my sweat suit.
ABE … do something!
UNABLE TO COMPENSATE. THE PLATFORM TRANSPORTING ROBERT EISENBRAUN IS EMITTING AN ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE IN EXCESS OF 32.1740 FEET PER SECOND SQUARED, EFFECTIVELY NEUTRALIZING THE EARTH’S GRAVITY. ACCELERATION AT ALTITUDE CREATES A GRAVITATIONAL BURBLE, PRODUCING FORCES THREE TIMES THOSE OF STANDARD GRAVITY. THESE G-FORCES ARE BEING USED TO PIN ROBERT EISENBRAUN TO THE PLATFORM SURFACE.
Fighting to turn my head, I glanced to the left and saw Oscar. The cephaloped appeared to be alive, curled up on an egg-shaped acrylic pod anchored to the metallic platform.
What is the platform’s power source?
THE POWER SOURCE IS THE PLATFORM’S PHOTOVOLTAIC CELL, AUGMENTED BY A SMALL ANEUTRONIC FUSION REACTOR LOCATED BENEATH THE PLATFORM BY THE REAR COUPLING.
Fusion? Using what elements?
DEUTERIUM AND HELIUM-3.
Can it be shut down?
THE UNIT CAN ONLY BE SHUT DOWN BY ITS TRANSHUMAN OPERATOR.
Forcing my head to the right as far as I could, I stared at a life-form so bizarre it rendered the other Omega dream elements nothing more than a day at the local zoo.
The term “transhuman” was first coined in 1927 by biologist Julian Huxley, who theorized that at some point in the future the human species could improve upon its genetic design by integrating advanced technology into the physical body in order for man to transcend the limitations of life. In a sense, ABE rendered me transhuman, though I was light-years from the medical science that yielded the being before me.
The transhuman that ABE was referring to
was
the platform—part human, part machine, with the human element being the head, arms, and upper torso of a woman embedded into the bow of the transport like a masthead.
She was hairless and as pale as moonlight, and where her eyes should have been there were only white lenses. Still, there was no doubt she had been cultivated from Andria’s DNA.
ABE, is communication possible?
ROBERT EISENBRAUN IS IN PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH THE SUBJECT, THEREFORE COMMUNICATION THROUGH THOUGHT ENERGY IS POSSIBLE.
Andie? It’s me … Ike.
No response.
Perhaps you don’t recognize—
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
Her voice echoed in my mind, the tone and inflection identical to that of my fiancée.
Where are you taking us?
OUR DESTINATION IS THE HOLY CITY.
That’s very exciting. Could you ease up on the g-force so I can breathe?
THE CREATOR DOES NOT WISH IT.
I’m sure the Creator wouldn’t mind. Please. I have a concussion, the g-forces could lead to a fatal blood clot. Would the Creator approve of my death before we arrived at the Holy City?
The invisible elephant mercifully parted, allowing me to breathe normally again. Sitting up, I looked out over the platform’s edge where thick distortion waves curled the air. Farther out, I could see the treetops, allowing ABE to calculate our altitude at 1,700 feet, our air speed at 147 knots.
The burble allowed me to stand. I approached Oscar, who pressed a suckered palm to the inside of his acrylic prison, his soulful yellow eyes staring at me.
I reached out with my right hand to press against the container, a lump forming in my throat. “Sorry, pal. I really fucked up this time. I’m gonna get you out of this, I promise.”
Leaving the cephaloped, I stood alongside the transhuman version of Andria Saxon. Wires and conduits ran down her bare spine, her breasts concealed behind a steel plate that swallowed her lower torso—assuming one even existed.
“Andie, why does the Creator wish to see me?”
IT IS NOT FOR ME TO KNOW.
I tried another tact. “Andie, do you possess memories of our time together in Virginia?”
YES.
“You appeared much different then.”
THE CREATOR HAS IMPROVED UPON MY ORIGINAL DESIGN.
“Of course he has. May I hold your hand?”
Cocking her head, she reached out with her right hand and I took it in my left. It was surprisingly warm, with a powerful pulse that beat alternately along either side of her wrist.
“Andie, do you miss being human?”
MY FUNCTION IS TO SERVE THE CREATOR.
“Which you do very well. But do you miss being human? Do you ever miss me?”
WHEN I DREAM OF BEING HUMAN, YOU ARE THERE.
“What if I could help you to become human?”
She released my hand.
I SHARE PART OF ANDRIA SAXON’S DNA, I SHARE HER MEMORIES, BUT I AM NOT HER. I AM A HUNTER-TRANSPORT.
“I think you are more. Release my friend; allow your human compassion to have a greater voice in your consciousness.”
I AM NOT PROGRAMMED FOR HUMAN COMPASSION.
“Of course you are. You share Andria Saxon’s DNA.”
THE CREATOR SAYS YOU ARE MANIPULATING ME.
Without warning, I collapsed to my knees, my body subjected to near-unbearable gravitational forces.
Andie … don’t.
I collapsed onto my stomach.
ABE, get her to respond.
SHE IS IN COMMUNICATION WITH ANOTHER ENTITY.
Can you eavesdrop?
THE COMMUNICATION IS NOT THOUGHT-ENERGY BASED. THE ENTITY IS COMMUNICATING THROUGH A BIOLOGICAL LINK.
I managed to turn my head so that I could see the eastern horizon. As the predawn gray chased away the night, I could make out a dark shadow towering over the jungle. It was a mountain plateau—a geological blemish that seemed out of place in the densely forested terrain, and we were heading right for it.
The transport shook violently as we passed over a rocky periphery enclosing a vast valley.
WARNING: FLUCTUATING … MAGNETIC FIELD … INTERFERENCE CAUSED BY A GEOLOGICAL ANOMALY.
What kind of geological anomaly?
TERRESTRIAL IMPACT CRATER … CREATED BY A LARGE MOON METEOR. CRATER DIAMETER: 22.7 MILES. COMPOSED OF A FRESHWATER GLACIER LAKE AND TWO ISLAND MASSES. APPROACHING LARGER MASS.
The ride smoothed as we traveled beyond the steep rise. A vast valley bloomed into view, its depths obscured by a dissipating early morning fog. For several minutes we hovered above the gray mist—until the sun cracked the horizon and lifted the veil and my eyes widened in wonderment.
I suppose one could describe the habitat as a forested city, but that would be as fitting as defining a computer as a glowing rectangular box. Materializing out of the haze was a living, breathing, self-sustaining entity—combining the biodiversity of the redwood canopy with a futuristic environmentally birthed metropolis a million years in the making.
Still battered by the crater’s magnetic interference, ABE nevertheless managed to flood my brain with undulating waves of information—a mind-numbing play-by-play of scientific theory that boggled my consciousness even as it threatened to drown me in the abstract. If the Great Die-Off had exposed a major weakness in human society it was modern man’s dependence on transportation in order to feed the masses. For decades, America and other nations had relied on industrial farms to grow and transport food, sacrificing nutrition for preservatives, compensating a lack of soil quality with fertilizers and pesticides—all of which required oil, so much so that it took ten calories of oil to produce and deliver one calorie of food. When the oil ran out, the inevitable happened.
In an attempt to prevent the inevitable, scientists in the early 2000s turned to genetic engineering. By altering, replacing, or resequencing pairs of genes within strands of DNA they discovered they could enrich or improve on nature’s original design. This led to an exciting new field—synthetic genomics. Though it couldn’t prevent the death of four billion people, the GDO survivors did manage to develop bio-fuels with reduced carbon imprints, designer foods enriched with cancer-preventing nutrients, smart-clothing made from genetically altered fabrics, and aero gels like the ones used to construct
Oceanus
.
The intellectual agenda on display below our hovering transport dwarfed all that.
Instead of altering the DNA of an existing life-form, the habitat’s designer had used synthetic biology to combine the genetic attributes of many different life-forms with building materials to create an entirely new “living system.”
Rising out of the fog-enshrouded waters of a sparkling azure lake were monstrous genetically enhanced redwood trees that towered hundreds of stories high and several square miles wide. Synthetic biology had transformed the bark and barn door–size leaves into organic photovoltaic composites that used the sun’s rays to power the trees’ glowing hives. These biosphere habitats were budding directly out of the redwood tree trunks, each pumpkinlike growth as large as
Oceanus
.
Far from stopping there, the trees’ highway of limbs had been engineered to sprout vertically stacked food depots. Dozens of these organic greenhouses grew like wild mushrooms from every limb—each structure a genetically enhanced ecosystem, nourished by the trees’ innate water distribution system.
From my limited vantage I counted fifteen mature tree cities, with dozens more juvenile systems being cultivated from other areas of the crater, the developing sites dammed off from the lake. As we hovered past one of these dry beds to land, I caught a glimpse of an exposed root system that resembled the tentacles of a kraken.
The marvel of these engineering feats exhilarated me—my ego basking in the knowledge that the seed which had spawned this new world had come from a simple protocol.
And then I looked at Oscar and felt shame.
We began our descent, the crushing g-force waning as our altitude diminished. I pressed myself into a sit-up, managing to regain my feet as the transport touched down onto a vacant docking portal, the framework of which was poised above the lake on pilings. Dozens of Hunter-Transports stretched end to end across the water, creating an elevated walkway that led to the entrance of the Holy City.
In the distance, a strange procession was heading our way. Fearing for Oscar, I decided I needed an ally.
I approached Transhuman Andria as her synthetic platform appendage locked down on to her assigned recharger. She gazed up at me, her human upper torso quivering, her white eye lenses now glowing crimson red.
“Andie, are you okay?” I reached for her hand—
—ABE stopping me.
WARNING: TRANSHUMAN ANDRIA IS BEING RECHARGED WITH 125,000 VOLTS OF ELECTRICITY. AVOID FLESH-TO-FLESH CONTACT.
Can she hear me?
YES.
Andie, are you all right? Are you in pain?
EXISTENCE … IS … PAIN.
Adrenaline coursed through my bloodstream even as my heart ached. For whatever reason she had been created, this life-form deserved better.
And then another nightmare of synthetic biology made its appearance, and the sorrow I felt turned to fear.
28
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
—H
IS
H
OLINESS
T
ENZIN
G
YATSO
, the fourteenth Dalai Lama
